


Grave Space

by anenko



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Story Fragment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-01-02
Updated: 2003-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenko/pseuds/anenko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal, Zoe, and the places they've been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grave Space

There is nothing left to this world but mud and decay. The bombs have taken the grass and the trees and the lowlands' shinning fields and the rain has turned ash and dust and poisoned earth to sucking mud. The dead rot in mud and water and sicken the living, twisting their guts so that men cry helpless with the pain of it. All there is to be heard is the steady rush of rain, the garbled cries of soldiers with their faces to the sky.

She is sitting with her back to a stone wall worn down to nearly nothing at all. The wall is enough to blunt the force of the wind. It does nothing to stop the rain. Her hair is short and flat against her skull: so thick with sweat and dirt and grit as to be left unmoved by the sudden downpour. Droplets leave lighter tracks across the darkness of her face.

She is no different than a hundred others he has seen, except: she is shivering as she cleans her gun, careful, methodological.

"You," he says, "with me."

"Sir," she says, and follows.

*

The rain turns to snow turns to ice. The snow is stained brown and yellow and red and quickly turns to slush. Fresh snowfalls coat the dead and the dying and makes this blasted land a virgin battlefield every day. They had thought to win this world within weeks and now the supplies are too slow in coming and soldiers' toes freeze in their boots and they piss on their hands for warmth. Alliance soldiers in insulated camouflage snipe at brown coats barely worth the meager warmth.

She is pulling the boots from a dead man's feet. Rats have already taken his eyes and stripped the flesh from his cheeks. The boots are thick and lined with fur and they might have killed him for them alone. Her fingers are stiff and clumsy with the cold. Her knuckles are cracked and crusted with dried blood. She does not look up from knotted and ice-coated laces when he asks: "what's your name, soldier?"

"Zoe," she says.

"Pretty name," he says.

"Yes sir." She presses the boots into his hands.

*

They watch spring's approach with little pleasure. The sun is bright and hot and the dead rise from melting snow, bloated and decaying with the sudden warmth. Soldiers tie scraps of cloth around their noses and mouths. Insects and rats make no distinction between the living and the dead and feed on both and offer only diseases in return. Swarms of insects settle on exposed flesh and in open wounds. They fill the eyes and mouths and noses of all. Too many of the living can barely stand upright for the knotting agony in their guts and they stain their pants when fear drives them past the point of pain.

The rats return in full force and quickly grow fat on the flesh of the dead and those wounded too weak to chase them away. They fear nothing and boldly steal rations from soldiers' packs and pockets. It is not uncommon to wake from an uneasy sleep to find a rat heavy upon one's chest. Their squealing never stops--more rats than men--and in the moments of silence between gunfire, the sounds of their bodies rubbing together can be heard, the sound of them dragging at empty and discarded tins of food. The rats are everywhere and there is a dull satisfaction in crushing their fat bodies beneath the butt of riffles.

They receive new orders: they are to move out, to take a hill of immense strategic importance. The hill looks no different than the dozens of others around it, save for the Alliance troops dug into it with their defensive walls and eager guns. They move carefully through fields of corpses, hands jittery against their weapons, raising thick black clouds of insects. They no longer even think of singing of the glory of victory, of the righteousness of war. They take the hill days later, slippery with mud and stubborn patches of snow. Men and women die by the dozens so that they might claim an uncertain victory of Hill 182. For the first time in months, there is time enough to bury the dead.

The sky is blue, so blue that it stings the eyes. He turns his eyes towards the heavens, and when they lower, Zoe is crouched before him. She is dirty and her face is sharp with hunger and relief fills him at the sight of her: here and alive. There is a medkit in her hands and she does not ask but reaches towards him and carefully peels slowly drying cloth away from his shoulder.

"I can tend--" he starts to say.

She shakes her head at him. "I've seen your stitches, sir," she says. "No, you can't."

There is nothing to say to that, so he says nothing. He watches her bent head as Zoe works and decides that his mother would have loved this woman. Zoe looks up at him and her lips curl into something that might once have been a lovely smile.

She keeps her voice flat and dry. "You might consider ducking next time, sir."

"I reckon that ain't a bad idea," he says solemnly. She is kind enough not to say anything as he doubles over around gulping laughter.

*

The transport ship comes a month later than anticipated. It is already full of defeated soldiers fleeing a dozen different worlds. The common soldiers move between mess and bunk, bunk and head. They are thin and weary, all of them, nearly indistinguishable one from the next. They carry their sickness with them, and the ship smells of shit and vomit and diseased flesh. There are hardly medics enough to tend to them all. A hundred voices climb one upon the other, rumbling discontent, as news and rumours are passed from bunk to bunk, worse with each retelling.

They eat hard squares of meat in congealed grease and play cards on their bunks. They bet rations and ammo they can't spare on the outcome of games and drink alcohol from bottles smuggled from pilfered civilian stashes. Time is spent writing letters that will be cut down to bland platitudes by censors. They thumb through bibles and the crumpled and stained skin mags which have been traded from one end of the verse to the next. They are kind with their treasures and when the alcohol is done and even the most alluring of models have lost their appeal, they talk. They speak of old friends and madmen, count battles won to battles lost. They are losing, they know, losing and waiting on the end.

He hardly sees Zoe at all, then. Once: doubled up in a bunk with a soldier so narrow and shapless that only bared flesh allows for the knowledge that she was a she. From the second tier of a bunk, Zoe peers down at him, hair shaved and face clean for the first time since he's known her. She raises her hand in a crooked salute. He sets a fond scowl in place but she has already crawled back under her blanet and the thin arm of a girl who snores as loudly as someone's giant of an uncle. Again, days later: stripped down to her skivvies and running a ragged nail along the seams of her pants. The clothes have been freshly steamed, but lice eggs survive and come to life with a person's body heat. They can spend hours picking at clothes that will never truly come clean. She scratches long lines down the column of her throat and does not look up to see him.

He misses her and is surprised by the realization. She is a good soldier, he tells himself, a good person to have watching his back.


End file.
